Saturday, January 18, 2014

Take-up differential in combined sprang-and-weaving

When I got to the end of the warp for my curved lines fabric, I was curious to know the difference in the take-up between my sprang warp (which was weighted in sections) and the warp that was beamed.

The answer was, not a lot considering this was after 4-plus yards of woven goods.  Off the loom, the portion of the fabric that has sprang measures 4 yards.  There was also some regular doublecloth at the two ends.

The difference between my "full" layer (the warp that always weaves balanced plain weave) and my "half" layer (which alternates weaving balanced plain weave with a loose, unbalanced plain weave when its other "half" does sprang) was 3 inches.  That is, the "full" layer had 3 inches more take-up.  The full and half layers are the knots on the left of the picture, lined up neatly in two rows since they are attached to the two beams.

The weighted sprang layer varied fairly wildly.  These are the knots to the right of the neat knot rows.  The difference was between 4" and 9.5" more take-up than my "half" layer (average about 5.5 inches).  It tells me my technique is not consistent; I must pull up more some times than others while working the sprang. 

An interesting data point from this experiment!

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